Does your engineering team meet too much and for too long? Do you end up leaving meetings tired and without any conclusions? These are clear signs that you’re doing it wrong.

The following tips will make your meetings more valuable so your team can stop wasting time.

Have an Agenda

Once you decide that a meeting is needed, send out a calendar invite so the attendees have it on their schedule beforehand and can come prepared. Make sure you only invite the people who are needed to run the meeting successfully.

Keep in mind that attendees with specific roles like Business Analysts or Product Owners should only be part of the meeting when their help is required. This avoids wasting their time so they can focus on more valuable tasks for the company instead.

Include a small agenda in the invite with the topics that will be discussed in the meeting. This gives everyone a clear idea of what the meeting will be about and what the goals are. An outline also gives your team the chance to prepare properly and saves time during the meeting.

The goal of the meeting needs to be realistic and achievable during the planned time. If the goal is not achievable in one meeting because the scope is too large, divide it into smaller sub-goals and hold several meetings for each.

Assign Clear Roles

The Host

The host of the meeting plays a crucial role. This person is in charge of timeboxing the meeting into small pomodoros. You can use a virtual pomodoro to keep track of time or a real one if necessary. The host needs to make sure everyone has a chance to speak up and participate.

The host of the meeting should also be the only one allowed to bring a laptop. When you do this, your attendees can avoid getting distracted and doing unrelated tasks like reading emails during the meeting. If your attendees come prepared, they won’t need a laptop or phone.

The Document Master

The Document Master plays another important part in meetings and is responsible for taking notes. It’s important to keep track of all the ideas, takeaways and next steps that come up during the meeting. Your engineering team can take full advantage of the meeting when it is well documented. This keeps the team’s objectives and next steps extremely clear.

During Your Meeting

Topics checklist

Review the list of topics again after every milestone. That will help you stay focused and on track. Once you’ve finished the discussion of one step during your meeting, ask the group for volunteers to be in charge of which tasks and projects to make sure things get done.

Break Time

It’s important to take small breaks every 30 or 60 minutes for longer meetings or seminars. Grab a coffee, water, or whatever helps you stay focused. Timeboxing the meeting in small pomodoros will help you decide when it’s the best time to take a break.

Final tips

1. Don’t raise your voice more than necessary to be heard by everyone in the meeting room. That will make your meeting much more enjoyable. No one wants to be in a room where people are yelling for hours.
2. Bring snacks, coffee, water, or whatever your team needs to the meeting room. That way they don’t need to leave the room unless it’s a pomodoro break, and they’ll be more focused.
3. Clean your meeting room when you’re finished. Nobody wants to start a meeting in a dirty room so be respectful of your colleagues.
4. Have a meeting about how your engineering team is running meetings. Discussing meetings in retrospect will help your team improve the way you accomplish goals and increase efficiency.

Author: Abdel Aoulad Yachou